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Marcia’s cheeks were flushed when David came home to dinner, for at the last she had to hurry.

As he stood in the doorway of the wide kitchen and caught the odor of the steaming platter of green corn she was putting upon the table, David suddenly realized that he had eaten scarcely anything for breakfast.

Also, he felt a certain comfort from the sweet steady look of wistful sympathy in Marcia’s eyes. Did he fancy it, or was there a new look upon her face, a more reserved bearing, less childish, more touched by sad knowledge of life and its bitterness? It was mere fancy of course, something he had just not noticed. He had seen so little of her before.

In the heart of the maiden there stirred a something which she did not quite understand, something brought to life by the sight of her sister’s daguerreotype lying at the edge of the valence, where it must have fallen from David’s pocket without his knowledge as he lay asleep. It had seemed to put into tangible form the solid wall of fact that hung between her and any hope of future happiness as a wife, and for the first time she too began to realize what she had sacrificed in thus impetuously throwing her young life into the breach that it might be healed. But she was not sorry,—not yet, anyway,—only frightened, and filled with dreary forebodings.

The meal was a pleasant one, though constrained. David roused himself to be cheerful for Marcia’s sake, as he would have done with any other stranger, and the girl, suddenly grown sensitive, felt it, and appreciated it, yet did not understand why it made her unhappy.

She was anxious to please him, and kept asking if the potatoes were seasoned right and if his corn were tender, and if he wouldn’t have another cup of coffee. Her cheeks were quite red with the effort at matronly dignity when David was finally through his dinner and gone back to the office, and two big tears came and sat in her eyes for a moment, but were persuaded with a determined effort to sink back again into those unfathomable wells that lie in the depths of a woman’s eyes. She longed to get out of doors and run wild and free in the old south pasture for relief. She did not know how different it all was from the first dinner of the ordinary young married couple; so stiff and formal, with no gentle touches, no words of love, no glances that told more than words. And yet, child as she was, she felt it, a lack somewhere, she knew not what.

But training is a great thing. Marcia had been trained to be on the alert for the next duty and to do it before she gave herself time for any of her own thoughts. The dinner table was awaiting her attention, and there was company coming.

She glanced at the tall clock in the hall and found she had scarcely an hour before she might expect David’s aunts, for David had brought her word that they would come and spend the afternoon and stay to tea.

She shrank from the ordeal and wished David had seen fit to stay and introduce her. It would have been a relief to have had him for a shelter. Somehow she knew that he would have stayed if it had been Kate, and that thought pained her, with a quick sharpness like the sting of an insect. She wondered if she were growing selfish, that it should hurt to find herself of so little account. And, yet, it was to be expected, and she must stop thinking about it. Of course, Kate was the one he had chosen and Kate would always be the only one to him.

It did not take her long to reduce the dinner table to order and put all things in readiness for tea time; and in doing her work Marcia’s thoughts flew to pleasanter themes. She wondered what Dolly and Debby, the servants at home, would say if they could see her pretty china and the nice kitchen. They had always been fond of her, and naturally her new honors made her wish to have her old friends see her. What would Mary Ann say? What fun it would be to have Mary Ann there sometime. It would be almost like the days when they had played house under the old elm on the big flat stone, only this would be a real house with real sprigged china instead of bits of broken things. Then she fell into a song, one they sang in school,

“Sister, thou wast mild and lovely,

Gentle as the summer breeze,

Pleasant as the air of evening

When it floats among the trees.”

But the first words set her to thinking of her own sister, and how little the song applied to her, and she thought with a sigh how much better it would have been, how much less bitter, if Kate had been that way and had lain down to die and they could have laid her away in the little hilly graveyard under the weeping willows, and felt about her as they did about the girl for whom that song was written.

The work was done, and Marcia arrayed in one of the simplest of Kate’s afternoon frocks, when the brass knocker sounded through the house, startling her with its unfamiliar sound.

Breathlessly she hurried downstairs. The crucial moment had come when she must stand to meet her new relatives alone. With her hand trembling she opened the door, but there was only one person standing on the stoop, a girl of about her own age, perhaps a few months younger. Her hair was red, her face was freckled, and her blue eyes under the red lashes danced with repressed mischief. Her dress was plain and she wore a calico sunbonnet of chocolate color.

“Let me in quick before Grandma sees me,” she demanded unceremoniously, entering at once before there was opportunity for invitation. “Grandma thinks I’ve gone to the store, so she won’t expect me for a little while. I was jest crazy to see how you looked. I’ve ben watchin’ out o’ the window all the morning, but I couldn’t ketch a glimpse of you. When David came out this morning I thought you’d sure be at the kitchen door to kiss him good-bye, but you wasn’t, and I watched every chance I could get, but I couldn’t see you till you run out in the garden fer corn. Then I saw you good, fer I was out hangin’ up dish towels. You didn’t have a sunbonnet on, so I could see real well. And when I saw how young you was I made up my mind I’d get acquainted in spite of Grandma. You don’t mind my comin’ over this way without bein’ dressed up, do you? There wouldn’t be any way to get here without Grandma seeing me, you know, if I put on my Sunday clo’es.”

“I’m glad you came!” said Marcia impulsively, feeling a rush of something like tears in her throat at the relief of delay from the aunts. “Come in and sit down. Who are you, and why wouldn’t your Grandmother like you to come?”

The strange girl laughed a mirthless laugh.

“Me? Oh, I’m Mirandy. Nobody ever calls me anything but Mirandy. My pa left ma when I was a baby an’ never come back, an’ ma died, and I live with Grandma Heath. An’ Grandma’s mad ’cause David didn’t marry Hannah Heath. She wanted him to an’ she did everything she could to make him pay ’tention to Hannah, give her fine silk frocks, two of ’em, and a real pink parasol, but David he never seemed to know the parasol was pink at all, fer he’d never offer to hold it over Hannah even when Grandma made him walk with her home from church ahead of us. So when it come out that David was really going to marry, and wouldn’t take Hannah, Grandma got as mad as could be and said we never any of us should step over his door sill. But I’ve stepped, I have, and Grandma can’t help herself.”

“And who is Hannah Heath?” questioned the dazed young bride. It appeared there was more than a sister to be taken into account.

“Hannah? Oh, Hannah is my cousin, Uncle Jim’s oldest daughter, and she’s getting on toward thirty somewhere. She has whitey-yellow hair and light blue eyes and is tall and real pretty. She held her head high fer a good many years waitin’ fer David, and I guess she feels she made a mistake now. I noticed she bowed real sweet to Hermon Worcester last Sunday and let him hold her parasol all the way to Grandma’s gate. Hannah was mad as hops when she heard that you had gold hair and blue eyes, for it did seem hard to be beaten by a girl of the same kind? but you haven’t, have you? Your hair is almost black and your eyes are brownie-brown. You’re years younger than Hannah, too. My! Won’t she be astonished when she sees you! But I don’t understand how it got around about your having gold hair. It was a man that stopped at your father’s house once told it——”

“It was my sister!” said Marcia, and then blushed crimson to think how near she had come to revealing the truth which must not be known.

“Your sister? Have you got a sister with gold hair?”

“Yes, he must have seen her,” said Marcia confusedly. She was not used to evasion.

“How funny!” said Miranda. “Well, I’m glad he did, for it made Hannah so jealous it was funny. But I guess she’ll get a set-back when she sees how young you are. You’re not as pretty as I thought you would be, but I believe I like you better.”

Miranda’s frank speech reminded Marcia of Mary Ann and made her feel quite at home with her curious visitor. She did not mind being told she was not up to the mark of beauty. From her point of view she was not nearly so pretty as Kate, and her only fear was that her lack of beauty might reveal the secret and bring confusion to David. But she need not have feared: no one watching the two girls, as they sat in the large sunny room and faced each other, but would have smiled to think the homely crude girl could suggest that the other calm, cool bud of womanhood was not as near perfection of beauty as a bud could be expected to come. There was always something child-like about Marcia’s face, especially her profile, something deep and other-world-like in her eyes, that gave her an appearance so distinguished from other girls that the word “pretty” did not apply, and surface observers might have passed her by when searching for prettiness, but not so those who saw soul beauties.

But Miranda’s time was limited, and she wanted to make as much of it as possible.

“Say, I heard you making music this morning. Won’t you do it for me? I’d just love to hear you.”

Marcia’s face lit up with responsive enthusiasm, and she led the way to the darkened parlor and folded back the covers of the precious piano. She played some tender little airs she loved as she would have played them for Mary Ann, and the two young things stood there together, children in thought and feeling, half a generation apart in position, and neither recognized the difference.

“My land!” said the visitor, “’f I could play like that I wouldn’t care ef I had freckles and no father and red hair,” and looking up Marcia saw tears in the light blue eyes, and knew she had a kindred feeling in her heart for Miranda.

They had been talking a minute or two when the knocker suddenly sounded through the long hall again making both girls start. Miranda boldly tiptoed over to the front window and peeped between the green slats of the Venetian blind to see who was at the door, while Marcia started guiltily and quickly closed the instrument.

“It’s David’s aunts,” announced Miranda in a stage whisper hurriedly. “I might ’a’ known they would come this afternoon. Well, I had first try at you anyway, and I like you real well. May I come again and hear you play? You go quick to the door, and I’ll slip into the kitchen till they get in, and then I’ll go out the kitchen door and round the house out the little gate so Grandma won’t see me. I must hurry for I ought to have been back ten minutes ago.”

“But you haven’t been to the store,” said Marcia in a dismayed whisper.

“Oh, well, that don’t matter! I’ll tell her they didn’t have what she sent me for. Good-bye. You better hurry.” So saying, she disappeared into the kitchen; and Marcia, startled by such easy morality, stood dazed until the knocker sounded forth again, this time a little more peremptorily, as the elder aunt took her turn at it.

And so at last Marcia was face to face with the Misses Spafford.

They came in, each with her knitting in a black silk bag on her slim arm, and greeted the flushed, perturbed Marcia with gentle, righteous, rigid inspection. She felt with the first glance that she was being tried in the fire, and that it was to be no easy ordeal through which she was to pass. They had come determined to sift her to the depths and know at once the worst of what their beloved nephew had brought upon himself. If they found aught wrong with her they meant to be kindly and loving with her, but they meant to take it out of her. This had been the unspoken understanding between them as they wended their dignified, determined way to David’s house that afternoon, and this was what Marcia faced as she opened the door for them.

She gasped a little, as any girl overwhelmed thus might have done. She did not tilt her chin in defiance as Kate would have done. The thought of David came to support her, and she grasped for her own little part and tried to play it creditably. She did not know whether the aunts knew of her true identity or not, but she was not left long in doubt.

“My dear, we have long desired to know you, of whom we have heard so much,” recited Miss Amelia, with slightly agitated mien, as she bestowed a cool kiss of duty upon Marcia’s warm cheek. It chilled the girl, like the breath from a funeral flower.

“Yes, it is indeed a pleasure to us to at last look upon our dear nephew’s wife,” said Miss Hortense quite precisely, and laid the sister kiss upon the other cheek. In spite of her there flitted through Marcia’s brain the verse, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Then she was shocked at her own irreverence and tried to put away a hysterical desire to laugh.

The aunts, too, were somewhat taken aback. They had not looked for so girlish a wife. She was not at all what they had pictured. David had tried to describe Kate to them once, and this young, sweet, disarming thing did not in the least fit their preconceived ideas of her. What should they do? How could they carry on a campaign planned against a certain kind of enemy, when lo, as they came upon the field of action the supposed enemy had taken another and more bewildering form than the one for whom they had prepared. They were for the moment silent, gathering their thoughts, and trying to fit their intended tactics to the present situation.

During this operation Marcia helped them to remove their bonnets and silk capes and to lay them neatly on the parlor sofa. She gave them chairs, suggested palm-leaf fans, and looked about, for the moment forgetting that this was not her old home plentifully supplied with those gracious breeze wafters.

They watched her graceful movements, those two angular old ladies, and marvelled over her roundness and suppleness. They saw with appalled hearts what a power youth and beauty might have over a man. Perhaps she might be even worse than they had feared, though if you could have heard them talk about their nephew’s coming bride to their neighbors for months beforehand, you would have supposed they knew her to be a model in every required direction. But their stately pride required that of them, an outward loyalty at least. Now that loyalty was to be tried, and Marcia had two old, narrow and well-fortified hearts to conquer ere her way would be entirely smooth.

Well might Madam Schuyler have been proud of her pupil as alone and unaided she faced the trying situation and mastered it in a sweet and unassuming way.

They began their inquisition at once, so soon as they were seated, and the preliminary sentences uttered. The gleaming knitting needles seemed to Marcia like so many swarming, vindictive bees, menacing her peace of mind.

“You look young, child, to have the care of so large a house as this,” said Aunt Amelia, looking at Marcia over her spectacles as if she were expected to take the first bite out of her. “It’s a great responsibility!” she shut her thin lips tightly and shook her head, as if she had said: “It’s a great impossibility.”

“Have you ever had the care of a house?” asked Miss Hortense, going in a little deeper. “David likes everything nice, you know, he has always been used to it.”

There was something in the tone, and in the set of the bow on Aunt Hortense’s purple-trimmed cap that roused the spirit in Marcia.

“I think I rather enjoy housework,” she responded coolly. This unexpected statement somewhat mollified the aunts. They had heard to the contrary from some one who had lived in the same town with the Schuylers. Kate’s reputation was widely known, as that of a spoiled beauty, who did not care to work, and would do whatever she pleased. The aunts had entertained many forebodings from the few stray hints an old neighbor of Kate’s had dared to utter in their hearing.

The talk drifted at once into household matters, as though that were the first division of the examination the young bride was expected to undergo. Marcia took early opportunity to still further mollify her visitors by her warmest praise of the good things with which the pantry and store-closet had been filled. The expression that came upon the two old faces was that of receiving but what is due. If the praise had not been forthcoming they would have marked it down against her, but it counted for very little with them, warm as it was.

“Can you make good bread?”

The question was flung out by Aunt Hortense like a challenge, and the very set of her nostrils gave Marcia warning. But it was in a relieved voice that ended almost in a ripple of laugh that she answered quite assuredly: “Oh, yes, indeed. I can make beautiful bread. I just love to make it, too!”

“But how do you make it?” quickly questioned Aunt Amelia, like a repeating rifle. If the first shot had not struck home, the second was likely to. “Do you use hop yeast? Potatoes? I thought so. Don’t know how to make salt-rising, do you? It’s just what might have been expected.”

“David has always been used to salt-rising bread,” said Aunt Hortense with a grim set of her lips as though she were delivering a judgment. “He was raised on it.”

“If David does not like my bread,” said Marcia with a rising color and a nervous little laugh, “then I shall try to make some that he does like.”

There was an assurance about the “if” that did not please the oracle.

“David was raised on salt-rising bread,” said Aunt Hortense again as if that settled it. “We can send you down a loaf or two every time we bake until you learn how.”

“I’m sure it’s very kind of you,” said Marcia, not at all pleased, “but I do not think that will be necessary. David has always seemed to like our bread when he visited at home. Indeed he often praised it.”

“David would not be impolite,” said Aunt Amelia, after a suitable pause in which Marcia felt disapprobation in the air. “It would be best for us to send it. David’s health might suffer if he was not suitably nourished.”

Marcia’s cheeks grew redder. Bread had been one of her stepmother’s strong points, well infused into her young pupil. Madam Schuyler had never been able to say enough to sufficiently express her scorn of people who made salt-rising bread.

“My stepmother made beautiful bread,” she said quite childishly; “she did not think salt-rising was so healthy as that made from hop yeast. She disliked the odor in the house from salt-rising bread.”

Now indeed the aunts exchanged glances of “On to the combat.” Four red spots flamed giddily out in their four sallow cheeks, and eight shining knitting needles suddenly became idle. The moment was too momentous to work. It was as they feared, even the worst. For, be it known, salt-rising bread was one of their most tender points, and for it they would fight to the bitter end. They looked at her with four cold, forbidding, steely, spectacled eyes, and Marcia felt that their looks said volumes: “And she so young too! To be so out of the way!” was what they might have expressed to one another. Marcia felt she had been unwise in uttering her honest, indignant sentiments concerning salt-rising bread.

The pause was long and impressive, and the bride felt like a naughty little four-year-old.

At last Aunt Hortense took up her knitting again with the air that all was over and an unrevokable verdict was passed upon the culprit.

“People have never seemed to stay away from our house on that account,” she said dryly. “I’m sure I hope it will not be so disagreeable that it will affect your coming to see us sometimes with David.”

There was an iciness in her manner that seemed to suggest a long line of offended family portraits of ancestors frowning down upon her.

Marcia’s cheeks flamed crimson and her heart fairly stopped beating.

“I beg your pardon,” she said quickly, “I did not mean to say anything disagreeable. I am sure I shall be glad to come as often as you will let me.” As she said it Marcia wondered if that were quite true. Would she ever be glad to go to the home of those two severe-looking aunts? There were three of them. Perhaps the other one would be even more withered and severe than these two. A slight shudder passed over Marcia, and a sudden realization of a side of married life that had never come into her thoughts before. For a moment she longed with all the intensity of a child for her father’s house and the shelter of his loving protection, amply supported by her stepmother’s capable, self-sufficient, comforting countenance. Her heart sank with the fear that she would never be able to do justice to the position of David’s wife, and David would be disappointed in her and sorry he had accepted her sacrifice. She roused herself to do better, and bit her tongue to remind it that it must make no more blunders. She praised the garden, the house and the furnishings, in voluble, eager, girlish language until the thin lines of lips relaxed and the drawn muscles of the aunts’ cheeks took on a less severe aspect. They liked to be appreciated, and they certainly had taken a great deal of pains with the house—for David’s sake—not for hers. They did not care to have her deluded by the idea that they had done it for her sake. David was to them a young god, and with this one supreme idea of his supremacy they wished to impress his young wife. It was a foregone conclusion in their minds that no mere pretty young girl was capable of appreciating David, as could they, who had watched him from babyhood, and pampered and petted and been severe with him by turns, until if he had not had the temper of an angel he would surely have been spoiled.

“We did our best to make the house just as David would have wished to have it,” said Aunt Amelia at last, a self-satisfied shadow of what answered for a smile with her, passing over her face for a moment.

“We did not at all approve of this big house, nor indeed of David’s setting up in a separate establishment for himself,” said Aunt Hortense, taking up her knitting again. “We thought it utterly unnecessary and uneconomical, when he might have brought his wife home to us, but he seemed to think you would want a house to yourself, so we did the best we could.”

There was a martyr-like air in Aunt Hortense’s words that made Marcia feel herself again a criminal, albeit she knew she was suffering vicariously. But in her heart she felt a sudden thankfulness that she was spared the trial of living daily under the scrutiny of these two, and she blest David for his thoughtfulness, even though it had not been meant for her. She went into pleased ecstasies once more over the house, and its furnishings, and ended by her pleasure over the piano.

There was grim stillness when she touched upon that subject. The aunts did not approve of that musical instrument, that was plain. Marcia wondered if they always paused so long before speaking when they disapproved, in order to show their displeasure. In fact, did they always disapprove of everything?

“You will want to be very careful of it,” said Aunt Amelia, looking at the disputed article over her glasses, “it cost a good deal of money. It was the most foolish thing I ever knew David to do, buying that.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Hortense, “you will not want to use it much, it might get scratched. It has a fine polish. I’d keep it closed up only when I had company. You ought to be very proud to have a husband who could buy a thing like that. There’s not many has them. When I was a girl my grandfather had a spinet, the only one for miles around, and it was taken great care of. The case hadn’t a scratch on it.”

Marcia had started toward the piano intending to open it and play for her new relatives, but she halted midway in the room and came back to her seat after that speech, feeling that she must just sit and hold her hands until it was time to get supper, while these dreadful aunts picked her to pieces, body, soul and spirit.

It was with great relief at last that she heard David’s step and knew she might leave the room and put the tea things upon the table.